Alex Tang
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- Random Musings from a Doctor's Chair
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Books Recommendation
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Medical Students /Paediatric notes
Buford, Bob.2001. Stuck in Halftime: Reinventing Your
One and Only Life. Grand Rapids. MI: Zondervan
Notes:
Section One
Stuck in Halftime
1. Beyond Good Intentions
From success to significance
“The best Halftime outcomes are those where people have begun a parallel career
years earlier.”p.26
2. Stuck is Good
“One of the benefits of getting stuck in Halftime is that it forces you to ask
more questions; to dig deeper into what you are looking for and how to find it.
It can compel you to get serious about knowing who you designed to be and
discovering how to live closer to who you really are.”p.32
“Author Mihlay Csikszentmihalyi has conducted landmark studies on what makes
people happy (see his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience). One of
the things he has learned from years of research on the subject is that leisure
and “free time” is not what make us happy or content. Real happiness comes when
we have a specific goal and are engaged in meeting that goal. If we lose sight
of the goal, we drift back to boredom. If the goal is too big and unattainable,
we give up. We are at our best when we are in that zone between anxiety and
boredom. Csikszentmihalyi calls this the “flow zone”, and explains why within a
year or two after their injuries, quadriplegics return to their original level
of happiness – the same with lottery winners. We are wired to be engaged in
meaningful activities most of our lives, and Halftime is a deliberate and
strategic effort to stay engaged but with the right things.”p.34-35
3. Detoxing from the Addiction to Success
“Success is addictive. Like a drug, it never completely satisfies. No matter how
much you have, it is never enough.”p.38
“Ken Blanchard knew that it was time. Ken has known great success. The coauthor
of several best-selling books, including The One Minute Manager, Ken has sold
more than nine million books. He and his brilliant and attractive wife, Margie,
began Blanchard Training and Development fifteen or so years ago and built it
into one of he leading management organization in the world. He has made a life
of speaking to big (and admiring) audiences all over the country. He writes
books that are always in demand. He leads satellite-delivered teleconferences
all over the world. Ken and Margie are riding a wonderful wave of success that
feels like it could go on forever, and it has been a great ride.
Ken is sixty…A few years ago he began hearing that still, small voice in his
inner life. A wise man, Ken listened. He sensed that despite all that he had
accomplished, there was something more. Just out of his reach, and it had
nothing to do with growing his business bigger. He knew what he wanted to do,
but first, he says, he had to admit he had an addiction problem. He needed to
detox from success. He needed to free himself from its power.”p.40-41
“Planned abandonment” (Peter Drucker)
4. The False Paths of Halftime
From somebody to nobody.
Two false paths that faces us in midlife.
(1) one that leads us back home and status quo (the homestead)
(2) promises leisure (leisure world)
5. The Myths of Halftime
Ø The Peter Pan Myth (I’ll be young forever)
Ø The Leisure World Myth
Ø The Gatsby Myth (need to impress, need to maintain an illusion)
Ø The Former Great Person Myth (Me. Used-to-be)
Ø The Harper Lee Myth (cannot top what you have achieved)
“Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird- and not a word since. Those close to
her say she was afraid to attempt another book. Her inability to live up to that
“one shining moment” lead to an obscure life almost completely absent from
literary circles.
Ralph Ellison is another example. He remained frozen on the trigger after the
huge success of The Invisible man. Forty years and not another book, though one
was always in the works. His publisher has just brought out his “partially
complete” work as a posthumorous published novel”p.64-65
Ø The Money Myth (all you need is enough money and you can do what you want to
do. But then, how much s enough?)
Ø The Solomon Myth (lifelong self improvement plan)
Ø The Low Commitment Myth (frittering yourself away)
Ø The Aging Myth (you are to old)
“The great humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer, could have said that after a
distinguished career in medicine. But the first atomic explosion triggered a
passion for peace that began when he turned seventy and led to being awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1952. He traveled to Europe frequently to lecture until he was
eighty-four and actively cared for patients in his hospital in Gabon. At
eighty-seven he helped build a half-mile of road near his hospital and then
designed and helped construct a bridge.”p.69
Section Two
Into the Second Half
6. The Twenty-first Century: A World of Opportunity
A.O.L. factors affected your Second Half.
Affluence
Option
Longevity
“In 1884, German chancellor Otto von Bismark arbitrarily set the age fore
retirement at sixty-five, thus inventing the Social Security pension system. It
was one of those safe benefits for he government to offer, since few people
lived that long. In 1900, the life expectancy for men was around forty-six
years.”p.78
7. New Rules for the Second Half
Ø Begin with yourself
o “The best way to get at this is simply ask yourself some questions and answer
them honestly. Questions like” What do I believe? What am I most passionate
about? What would I really like to be doing if I could? What challenge me more
than anything I’ve ever done before? What has my whole life up to now prepared
me to do?”p.87
o www.Halftime.org uses a tool called G.R.A.S.P.
§ Grounding
§ Roles
§ Abilities
§ Spiritual gifts
§ Passions
Ø Take care of family first
Ø Find an organizational vehicle that fits your team
Ø Build on islands of health and strength
Ø Just do it
Ø Work only with the receptive
Ø Pay your dues
Ø All work is done in teams
Ø Find a mentor
8. The Halftime transition Toolbox
Ø Money
o “When the famous union boos, John L. Lewis, was asked how much was enough, he
answered, “More.”p.95
o Low-cost probes (trying the ministry out first before you quit your job)
o Parallel career
o More with less (frugal lifestyle)
Ø Time (Strategic Coach program by Dan Sullivan)
o Focus days (doing)
o Buffer days (planning, training, thinking)
o Free days (Sabbath rest)
Ø What’s in the Box?
Ø Self-assessment
o Don’t’ follow OPA (other people’s agenda)
o Peter Drucker, “Managing Oneself” www.corpedia.com
Ø A Brand New BHAG
o Jim Collins Big Hairy Audacious Goal- a problem so large that it cannot be
solved in one corporate leader’s tenure but must to extend into the future.
Ø The Opportunity Scan
Ø Strategic Planning
Ø Build a Halftime Team
o Buford model
§ Board of directors who meet once only to sound out new ideas-sanity check
§ Regularly meet a board of directors for his organization, Send Half
enterprises, Leadership Network and Buford Foundation
§ List of top twenty relationships that can contribute something useful on what
his current project
§ Farm Club- twenty individuals with whom he has close relationship infrequently
Ø Find Your Role
o The hero
o The hero’ partner
o The hero’s patron
o The hero’s exert
o The hero’s team
Section Three
The Inspiration of Significance
9. The Elusive Nature of Significance
Ø Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer is a riddle or
the prize in a reassure hunt. Meaning is something you build into you life. You
built it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the
experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your talent and
understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the values for which you
are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only
one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.
Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the
particular balance of success or failure is of less account.
Extracted from “The Road to Renewal,” a speech given by John Gardner in April
1993
Ø “Significance isn’t about success or failure. It’s about meaning”p.117
10. Leading Level 5 Lives
Ø Jim Collins’ Level 5 Executive
o They were totally sold out to the work they are doing’ Their ambitions for the
work they are doing is unbounded.
o Each has a “very deep personal humility”
11. The Need for a Heroic Second Half
“Everyone wants to be a hero. And once we recognize this, it will help us to
progress on our journey into the Second half.”p.130-131
12. What Do You Want to Be Remembered For?
100X
“I want to be remembered as a high-yield/right-now philanthropist and kingdom
entrepreneur.”p.137
13. The End of the Beginning
|15 July 2006|
